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2018/04/17

Author Interview: Adam Smith

The Daytime Renegade recently conducted an interview with my friend and editing client, author Adam Lane Smith. Their discussion ranges over several fascinating topics that aspiring authors would do well to peruse. Adam's background and his experience with traditional publishing struck a particular chord with me.

I grew up in Central California in George Lucas’ home town. When he writes about Tattooine and has Luke complain about how miserable it is, that’s what he’s talking about. When he writes about Mos Eisley, that’s our home.

I grew up poor in the ghetto. My mother came from a wealthy family but was disowned and disinherited for marrying a Christian man, and my father grew up with a divorced mother in trailer parks. No one helped us, and my parents each worked multiple low-paying jobs day and night to keep us fed and scraping by. Life was hard. Much of this is mentioned or hinted at in the afterword of my novel.

People died, friends were molested, I fought for my life several times against violence and untreated sickness, I developed PTSD, family members were abducted and raped by gangs, violence was ever present. One of the first lessons you learn is to lay on the floor with the adults on top of you so they die first and the kids might live under the corpses.I learned to love reading as an escape, and dreamed of being a writer. By the grace of God, I worked my way out with the help of my diligent wife. Now we live a life of relative comfort and safety on a farm.

Those who’ve read Making Peace probably see a great deal of my upbringing in the setting.

In a just and sane world, a man who clawed his way out of such crushing poverty and violence to enter a noble profession and write in his scant free time would be handed the publishing golden ticket and lauded by the custodians of culture.

But this is Clown World, as Adam's dealings with his publisher demonstrate.

I’ll need to be careful how I word this answer to prevent legal troubles.

After that opening line, you can probably guess where this is going.

Initially, Making Peace was set in a fantasy setting created by a small writer/publisher company.

From my perception, my former publisher initially claimed to be apolitical in their dealings. Anyone of good moral character could enter and write.

From my perception, after the Trump election, my former publisher went full SJW. By my recollection, they posted a huge anti-Trump “the world is ending” blog article on the company website. By my recollection, they also posted strongly anti-Christian posts on various platforms.

From my perception and by my recollection, when I confronted them on slashing half of our potential audience, and told them I was (at the time) an Independent moderate who voted for Trump for his job-building and trade promises and that I was a Christian, I was verbally attacked. By my recollection, they stopped using my name in emails and referred to me as “Christian” in a derogatory manner, alluded to white male privilege they felt I relied on to live comfortably (poverty-stricken ghetto upbringing and continued poverty at the time not to be considered), then listed emotional crimes which they felt my kind were guilty of.

By my recollection, I was informed that I could no longer use the chat programs we used to share documents and setting information. That was now a “safe space.” I also would not be acknowledged in any personal conversations, it would be business only from then on.

By my recollection, I was informed that because I worked in health care and was a Christian, the publisher felt they should report me to numerous agencies as a danger to clients. From my perception, it was heavily implied that the company may begin a campaign to get me removed from my day job and blackballed from my professional field because of my religious faith.

Because I had been relying on them for help with publishing and marketing a book in their setting, which by my recollection I agreed to do as a favor to them, I officially resigned from all association with their company. With my perception that my day job was being threatened because of my religious faith, it felt unsafe to continue any association with them. I took my book and rewrote it into the sci-fi setting I’d wanted to create all along but had been told (by my recollection) that I could probably do AFTER writing this book in their setting as a favor to them. I didn’t feel my books would be given adequate representation with them, and I was uncomfortable with what appeared to me to be blatant racist, sexist, and religious discrimination.

I reached out to Nick Cole for help after reading an article detailing his own similar problems with his former publisher, and he kindly informally mentored me from there on. Very sweet man. I likely would have given up on writing if he hadn’t encouraged me after that debacle.

To any aspiring authors reading this post, run--do not walk--away from legacy publishing. You have all the tools at your fingertips to publish professional-quality books on your own. There is nothing, nothing a publisher can do for you that you can't do quicker, cheaper, and better yourself.

I wouldn't ask you to do what I'm unwilling to do myself. In fact, I just released my seventh book after doing everything but the cover art myself. It's doing great, and every sale is free money in my pocket.

To any Christians who are reading this and who still harbor illusions that Leftists can be fixed, appeased, or reasoned with, let Adam's persecution serve as a warning. The Left hate the Christ, and you who follow Him, with a blind, diabolical hatred. They do not wish to coexist. They will not leave you alone, and the thought of seeing you financially ruined or dead fills them with near-sexual ecstasy. They cannot be bargained with, only avoided in the short term and defeated in the long run.

I salute Adam for his perseverance and saintly patience, and I pray for his success.If you haven't read his book Making Peace, do yourself the great favor of picking it up. The setting, story, and characters are excellent, though as the book's editor, I'm admittedly biased.

That's a tragic story. Flannery O'Connor inspired him, and Walker Percy got him so much attention, but the publishers just utterly failed the poor man. It was really sad learning about his downward spiral into suicide.

Those same scumbags have no problem cashing in on him after he's dead, though.

Do these publishers simply not understand how huge of a chunk of SFF readers are Catholics and Mormons, as well as other Christians? It's not just a disproportionate number of SFF authors are mormons, so are a disproportionate number of SFF fans. Granted they aren't afraid of losing male readers, white readers, etc, so I guess it makes sense, but I wonder if they have given any thought of who will buy their books if they drive off all these people. Given the precarious position of trad publishing at the moment, it feels like the Dinosaurs taunting the asteroids.

Granted, part of the strategy probably involves these people being angry at the publishers, but still buying their books. All the more reason your 'Don't give money to people who hate you' needs to be heeded.

What JD said. And publishers' marketing people know damn well that demographic doesn't have the numbers to support their business model.

Here's where we zoom out from the smoldering crater and see a whole swarm of asteroids bearing down on the earth. Exclusively catering to fat, bubble-dwelling cat ladies isn't just tradpub's business model. It's *every* major corporation's business model.

Turn on the TV and pay attention to the commercials. Chances are that out of any given half-hour show, you'll see at least five ads featuring an omni-capable, eye-rolling woman keeping her bumbling retard of a husband from licking an electrical outlet. This is not coincidental.

It's also not coincidental that many companies who've adopted this model are crashing and burning. It's not just the Big Five and B&N. It's the NFL, ESPN, Lucasfilm, Kellogg's, Target, Starbucks, Marvel, CNN, and a host of others.

Circling back around to your original question, the reason you don't know what to make of publishers' obviously self-destructive decisions is that you assume they're in business to advance their organizations' original goals and make money while they're at it. That may have been true of these companies' founders, who've long since been bought out or gone to their graves.

The globo-commie tools in charge now don't give a fig about their companies' original objectives, or even turning a profit. They are cultists whose one, driving obsession is diabolical hatred of straight, white, Christian men.

If Tor Books is a 747, PNH has filled the tank to the brim with jet fuel, climbed to cruising altitude, and sent that sucker into a nosedive pointed straight at flyover country.

That's just an analogy, mind you. Because our corporate overlords lack the physical courage to go down with the ship. They've strapped on their golden parachutes for a soft landing at the next converged outfit.

What's the appeal of the frumpy vivid coloured haired cat ladies? i regard them as the female versions of autists sperging hysterically about their deep insecurities.I get the the spiritual warfare part because how else do you see the sudden burst of unreason pervading the world?xavier

Last week yhe digital reader site had a link about romance's diversity problem.My reaction is women want to read anout the rough edge but golden hearted alpha male manly man who fall on love with the beautiful but down on her luck gal who have a happy ending with lots of kids and a wonderful home.Women don't want to be hectored about cisnormative patriarchal toxic masculinity. Ya know like that hilarious New Yorker article about Chick a fil opening in New York.

There's a reason the SJWs were going hard after the Hallmark Christmas movies last year. That's the last place normal women can get anything close to a fun popcorn romance story free of Current Year tropes. It's also why their ratings go up every year while the other networks plunge into the abyss.

One day my parents and I spent an entire Sunday watching American Pickers in a hotel room. In the early afternoon, all the commercials were aimed at the Boomers: reverse mortgages, disposable catheters, every drug under the sun, local surgical centers.

Then in the evening, the commercials switched to the SIW saving her hubby from licking the outlet, and every single couple was mixed raced. After an hour of it, we just turned the TV off.

With that sort of culture being stuffed down our throats, it's no wonder women nag/womansplain to their men, and the men wilt like children under a school marm's finger shaking. That's the "reality" on TV.

Write critical reviews where you mix the praise with the criticism.explain to the writer and potential readers what the you liked about the story and didn't like and why.Good authours take good reviews tp heart and will improve their storytelling.and it has nothing to do with being a fawning hack but a pro who's paid to entertain people from the vicissitudes of life for a short time. Good writer are always striving to be better

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